Tiger Global Management, the private equity firm that holds significant stakes in ecommerce companies Flipkart and Myntra, has raised $1.5 billion in its eighth fund, according to a filing with the SEC. A total of 415 investors (limited partners) have participated in the fund, dubbed Tiger Global Private Investment Partners VIII.
The new fund is the same size as the New York headquartered firm’s seventh fund, which was raised in 2012.
The firm’s latest deal to hit the headlines was the $80 million Series C round in online Q&A service Quora. It led the round with participation from Benchmark, Matrix Partners, North Bridge, and Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel. High-growth technology startups, particularly in the Internet domain, has been a big area of focus for the firm in the past several years. Some of the other well known startups in its global portfolio include Eventbrite, Zynga, Actifio, Glassdoor and SurveyMonkey.
The 13-year old firm has been particularly active in India, closing deals with a frequency and aggression that often leaves its peers breathless. Ecommerce has been a recurrent theme in its deal run, which kicked off in earnest in 2011. Incidentally, the firm’s current deal run represents its second outing in this market. It entered India in 2007 and played primarily in the later stage private equity space, investing in entities such as the National Stock Exchange, Future Group and Educomp Solutions. Then, in 2009, it shut down its offices in Mumbai’s upscale Worli neighbourhood and exited the country.
It re-entered India in 2011 but with a markedly different strategy. This time, as opposed to its earlier preference for solo deals, it has pursued a more collaborative strategy, bringing in peers as co-investors on several deals. In terms of stage, it has focused on significantly earlier stage companies, almost always from the Internet or technology sector.
Some of its recent deals here include real estate search and listings platform Commonfloor, fashion and apparel focused ecommerce player Myntra, car rentals aggregator Olacabs and multi-channel ecommerce player Flipkart.
Portfolio companies Flipkart and Myntra are currently in the news with reports speculating that the two companies are in the last stages of pushing through a merger, encouraged by their common investors. The speculation on the merger started doing the rounds last year.
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